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Revolution,  Non-­‐Violence,  and  the  Arab  Uprisings        

July  2015            Abstract  This   article   combines   insights   from   the   literature   on   revolutions   with   that   on   non-­‐violent  protest   in  order   to  assess   the  causes  and  outcomes  of   the  Arab  Uprisings.  The  article  makes  three  main  arguments:  first,  international  dynamics  were  the  precipitant  cause   of   the   Arab   Uprisings;   second,   because   the   region’s   ‘neo-­‐patrimonial’   regimes  were  particularly  vulnerable  to  shifts  in  state-­‐military  relations,  the  hold  of  elites  over  state   coercive   apparatuses   played   a   decisive   role   in   determining   the   outcomes   of   the  revolutions;  and  third,  the  organizational  character  of  the  protest  movements,  including  their   use   of   information   and   communication   technologies,   helped   to   raise   levels   of  participation,   but   limited   their   capacity   to   engender   major   transformations.   Of  particular   interest   to  scholarship  on  non-­‐violent  movements,   the  article  demonstrates  the   ways   in   which,   as   the   revolutionary   wave   spread   around   North   Africa   and   the  Middle  East,  protestors   in  states  outside  the  original  onset  of   the  crisis  overstated  the  possibilities  of  revolutionary  success.  At  the  same  time,  regimes  learned  quickly  how  to  demobilize   their   opponents.   The   lesson   is   clear:   the   timing   of   when   movements  emerged   was   just   as   important   as   their   organizational   coherence   and   levels   of  participation.          Contact  details  George  Lawson  Associate  Professor,  Department  of  International  Relations  London  School  of  Economics    London  WC2A  2AE  United  Kingdom      Tel:  +44  20  7955  6028  Email:  g.lawson@lse.ac.uk    

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Revolution  in  the  Contemporary  World1  

There  are  two  main  ways  of  approaching  the  study  of  revolution  in  the  contemporary  

world  –  and  they  are  both  wrong.  On  the  one  hand,  revolutions  appear  to  be  

everywhere:  on  the  streets  of  Cairo  and  Damascus;  in  the  slogans  of  anti-­‐austerity  

protestors;  and  in  the  potential  of  new  technologies  to  reshape  people’s  lives.  But  can  

revolution  really  be  popular  protest,  campaign  against  inequality,  and  technological  

breakthrough  at  the  same  time?  This  issue  is  further  complicated  by  a  second  equally  

common,  but  apparently  contradictory,  meme  –  that  revolutions  are  irrelevant  to  a  

world  in  which  the  big  issues  of  governance  and  economic  development  have  been  

settled.  As  Arno  Mayer  (2001:  3)  puts  it,  in  the  contemporary  world,  revolutions  appear  

to  offer  ‘little  promise  and  pose  little  threat’.  With  the  passing  of  state  socialism  in  the  

Soviet  Union,  it  is  supposed,  revolutions  appear  more  as  relics  of  a  bygone  age  than  as  

important  points  of  reference.  Both  of  these  positions  are  untenable.  While  the  former  

makes  revolution  so  all-­‐encompassing  that  it  becomes  an  empty  term  without  

substantive  content,  the  latter  is  overly  complacent,  failing  to  see  the  enduring  appeal  of  

attempts  to  overturn  existing  conditions  and  generate  alternative  social  orders.  The  

Arab  Uprisings  of  2011  are  the  latest  reminder  of  the  consistent  appeal  of  revolutionary  

struggles.    

 

To  point  to  the  enduring  appeal  of  revolutionary  struggles  does  not  mean  homogenizing  

the  experience  of  revolutions.  Revolutions  are  not  static  objects  of  analysis,  but  

processes  that  change  in  modality  across  time  and  place  (Motyl  1999:  23;  McAdam,  

Tarrow,  and  Tilly  2001:  13;  Tilly  2006:  9).  Revolutions  have  been  conducted  by  

nationalists  in  Algeria,  communists  in  Afghanistan,  Russia,  and  China,  radical  military  

groups  in  Ethiopia,  peasants  in  Mexico,  Islamists  in  Iran,  and  students  in  Egypt.  At  the  

same  time,  the  concept  of  revolution  exists  in  every  major  language  group  in  the  world.  

A  full  study  of  its  etymology  would  need  to  take  in  the  Greek  concepts  of  epanastasis  

(revolution),  the  Arabic  terms  inqilab  (to  rotate)  and  thaura  (revolution),  the  notions  of  

mered  (rebellion),  hitkomemut  (uprising),  meri  (revolt),  and  kesher  (plot)  in  classical  

Hebrew,  the  Chinese  word  geming  (change  of  life,  fate,  or  destiny),  and  the  Latin  verb  

revolvere  (to  return)  (Halliday  1999:  29-­‐35).  Probing  deeper  into  the  European  meaning  

of  the  term  reveals  further  diversity.  In  Ancient  Greece,  the  idea  of  revolution  was  

linked  to  a  circular  movement  contained  within  Aristotle’s  trinity  of  democracy,  

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oligarchy,  and  tyranny.  In  the  Middle  Ages,  the  concept  was  used  to  denote  a  return  to  a  

pre-­‐existing  order.  During  the  nineteenth  century,  the  republican  revolutions  of  

America  and  France  became  seen  as  archetypal,  reaching  their  apogee  in  the  1848  

‘Springtime  of  Nations’.  Following  the  emergence  of  communism,  revolution  became  

associated  with  inevitable,  violent  ruptures  from  one  type  of  social  order  (capitalism)  to  

another  (socialism).  After  the  collapse  of  the  Soviet  Union,  many  commentators  argued  

that  revolution  had  conjoined  with  reform  programs  to  generate  a  new  category  of  

‘refolution’  (Garton  Ash  1989,  1990),  or  reconnected  with  older  notions  of  return,  as  

captured  in  Jürgen  Habermas’s  (1990)  notion  of  ‘rectifying  revolutions’.  In  the  present  

day,  as  noted  above,  the  study  of  revolution  is  increasingly  caught  between  two  

extremes:  denigration  on  the  one  hand;  catch-­‐all  term  on  the  other.    

 

Two  preliminary  points  can  be  drawn  from  this  brief  survey:  first,  revolutions  shift  in  

modality  according  to  their  temporal-­‐spatial  context;  and  second,  revolutions  remain  

important  sites  of  struggle  (and,  potentially,  important  tools  of  analysis)  in  the  

contemporary  world.  But  what  form  do  contemporary  revolutions  assume?  This  article  

brings  together  the  literature  on  revolutions  with  that  on  non-­‐violent  protest  in  order  to  

assess  the  most  recent  wave  of  revolutions:  the  2011  Arab  Uprisings.  It  makes  three  

main  arguments:  first,  international  dynamics  were  the  precipitant  cause  of  the  Arab  

Uprisings;  second,  because  the  region’s  ‘neo-­‐patrimonial’  regimes  were  particularly  

vulnerable  to  shifts  in  state-­‐military  relations,  the  hold  of  elites  over  state  coercive  

apparatuses  played  a  decisive  role  in  determining  the  outcomes  of  the  revolutions;  and  

third,  the  organizational  form  assumed  by  the  protest  movements,  including  their  use  of  

information  and  communication  technologies  (ICTs),  helped  to  raise  levels  of  

participation,  but  limited  their  capacity  to  engender  major  transformations.  These  

arguments  shed  light  on  the  changing  character  of  contemporary  revolutionary  

movements;  they  also  help  to  elucidate  their  strengths  and  weaknesses.    

 

Revolution  and  Non-­‐Violent  Protest  

What  were  the  main  causes  of  the  Arab  Uprisings?  Research  highlights  three  main  

factors  that  lead  to  the  emergence  of  revolutionary  situations:  changes  in  international  

relations,  such  as  degrees  of  dependent  development,  shifting  client-­‐patron  networks,  

and  the  emergence  of  novel  transnational  discursive  fields  (Goldfrank  1979;  Skocpol  

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1979;  Hobsbawm  1986;  Halliday  1999;  Lawson  2004,  2015;  Adamson  2005;  Foran  

2005;  Beck  2011;  Tarrow  2012;  Goldstone  2014a;  Ritter  2015);  the  vulnerability  of  

certain  types  of  regime,  particularly  neo-­‐patrimonial  orders  that  combine  personalized  

rule  with  a  degree  of  legal-­‐rational  functioning  (Eisenstadt  1973;  Mann  1984;  Chehabi  

and  Linz  eds.  1998;  Goodwin  2001;  Goldstone  2009;  Bunce  and  Wolchik  2011);  and  a  

systemic  crisis  rooted  in  a  conjuncture  of  political-­‐coercive,  (relative)  economic,  and  

symbolic  crisis  (Halliday  1999;  Goldstone  2003;  Lawson  2004;  Foran  2005;  Goldstone  

2014a).  However,  revolutionary  situations  rarely  lead  to  successful  revolutions.  Again,  

research  highlights  three  main  dynamics  that  lie  behind  successful  revolutions:  levels  of  

state  effectiveness  (Goldstone  1991,  2001,  2003;  Goodwin  2001;  Foran  2005);  the  hold  

of  an  elite  over  the  coercive  apparatus  (Russell  1974;  Moore  1978;  Tilly  1978,  1995;  

Goldstone  1991;  Bellin  2012;  Nepstad  2013);  and  the  organizational  coherence  of  an  

opposition  through  the  use  of  ‘social  technologies’  ranging  from  revolutionary  stories  to  

networks  of  social  movements,  political  parties,  labor  organizations,  and  places  of  

worship  (Tilly  2006,  2008;  Selbin  2010;  Alexander  2011;  Tarrow  2012).    

 

This  last  point  is  worth  particular  consideration.  It  is  often  noted  that  there  is  little  

‘adhesive’  within  contemporary  revolutionary  movements  that  can  act  as  the  binding  

agent  of  a  new  social  order  (e.g.  Dunn  2008:  25).  This  means  that,  for  all  the  amendable  

conditions  for  revolution  in  the  contemporary  world,  and  for  all  the  willing  capacity  of  

many  publics  around  the  world  to  demand  radical  change,  there  is  little  sense  of  what  

an  alternative  order  would  look  like  once  such  trajectories  are  underway.  To  the  

contrary,  contemporary  revolutionary  movements,  from  the  Maidan  movement  in  

Ukraine  to  Hong  Kong’s  Umbrella  Movement,  tend  to  be  diffused  rather  than  centralized  

in  character  (Foran  2003;  Beissinger  2007).2  These  movements  promote  self-­‐

organization  and  autonomous  action,  eschewing  the  need  for  a  vanguard  party  that  will  

organize  protest  and  mobilize  people  to  action.  Such  a  configuration  resembles  the  

structure  of  many  other  contemporary  radical  movements  from  Spain’s  Indignados  

(‘Outraged’)  to  various  ‘First  Nations’  alliances.  All  of  these  movements  endorse  

resistance  to  existing  conditions.  But  few  have  a  sense  of  how  this  resistance  is  to  be  

realized  or  what  would  happen  if  their  actions  were  to  be  successful.  In  other  words,  the  

dilemma  facing  revolutionary  movements  in  the  contemporary  world  is  not  whither  

struggle,  but  to  what  end  these  struggles  lead  (Halliday  2003;  Callinicos  2008).  

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A  focus  on  the  organizational  logics  of  contemporary  revolutionary  movements  

provides  a  segue  into  debates  around  non-­‐violent  protest.  Scholarship  interrogating  the  

rise  and  impact  of  non-­‐violent  movements  has  made  clear  that  such  methods  are  not  

new  (Zunes  1994;  Ackerman  and  Duvall  2001;  Karatnycky  and  Ackerman  2005;  

Nepstad  2011;  Roberts  and  Garton  Ash  eds.  2011).  At  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  

century,  revolutionaries  in  Russia,  Iran,  Turkey,  and  elsewhere  sought  radical  change  

not  through  violent  overthrow,  but  through  struggles  that  shifted  sovereignty  away  

from  imperial  courts  towards  representative  assemblies,  written  constitutions,  and  

legal-­‐rational  bureaucracies  (Sohrabi  1995;  Kurzman  2008).  This  form  of  struggle,  

sustained  via  civil  rights  campaigns  in  parts  of  South  Asia,  southern  Africa,  and  North  

America,  has  become  increasingly  regularized  since  the  1970s.  Of  the  67  authoritarian  

regimes  dismantled  between  1972  and  2002,  over  70%  were  the  result  of  non-­‐violent  

uprisings  (Nepstad  2001:  4-­‐5).  A  key  conduit  here  is  the  work  of  Gene  Sharp  (1973),  

which  highlights  the  potential  of  around  200  methods  of  non-­‐violent  action,  from  the  

withdrawal  of  labour  to  the  imposition  of  boycotts.  More  recent  work  has  focused  on  

the  ‘non-­‐institutional’,  transgressive  dimensions  of  non-­‐violent  protest,  such  as  

occupations,  which  take  place  outside  formal  legal  channels  (Schock  2005:  6).  

Advocates  stress  the  advantages  of  non-­‐violent  repertoires  in:  widening  participation  

and  broadening  coalitions  (Chenoweth  and  Stephan  2011);  ratcheting-­‐up  international  

pressure  on  incumbents  (Ritter  2015);  and  inducing  defections  within  the  ruling  elite,  

thereby  weakening  the  ‘sanctioning  power’  of  the  state  (Nepstad  2011,  2013).  As  a  

result,  it  is  claimed,  non-­‐violent  campaigns  have  been  twice  as  successful  as  violent  

struggles  (Chenoweth  and  Stephan  2008:  9).  These  strategies  have  been  adopted  –  and  

adapted  –  by  a  range  of  contemporary  revolutionary  movements,  from  those  that  

ousted  state  bureaucratic  regimes  in  Central  and  Eastern  Europe  in  1989,  to  the  2011  

uprisings  in  North  Africa  and  the  Middle  East.    

 

As  the  literature  on  non-­‐violent  protest  has  developed,  it  has  taken  two  main  forms.  The  

first  concentrates  on  dynamics  within  opposition  movements.  For  Wendy  Pearlman  

(2011),  non-­‐violent  strategies  can  only  be  sustained  by  a  movement  with  high  levels  of  

internal  cohesion.  An  ‘organizational  structure  of  cohesion’  enforces  discipline  

(ensuring  restraint,  heightening  credibility,  and  enhancing  solidarity),  cultivates  clear  

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strategies  (infusing  participants  with  a  clear  sense  of  collective  purpose),  and  promotes  

resilience  (particularly  in  the  face  of  regime  coercion)  (Pearlman  2011:  11-­‐12,  22;  also  

see  Nepstad  2011:  131-­‐3).  A  fragmented  movement,  by  way  of  contrast,  has  a  greater  

chance  of  becoming  violent  (Pearlman  2011:  14-­‐20).  Erica  Chenoweth  and  Maria  

Stephan  (2011:  17,  82)  argue  that  the  ‘strategic  advantages’  of  non-­‐violent  protest  lie  in  

its  capacity  to  mobilize  mass  publics  and  delegitimize  adversaries.  The  staying  power  of  

diverse,  mass  participation  movements,  it  is  argued,  can  prompt  ‘loyalty  shifts’  within  

state  security  services  that,  in  turn,  increase  the  likelihood  of  success  (Chenoweth  and  

Stephan  2011:  46-­‐50).  A  second  strand  of  literature  is  more  ‘structural’.  Daniel  Ritter  

(2015),  for  example,  sees  the  international  context  as  crucial  to  the  capacity  of  non-­‐

violent  movements  to  engender  change.  Ritter  (2015:  5)  emphasizes  the  ways  in  which  

an  international  context  characterized  by  the  ‘iron  cage  of  liberalism’  traps  

authoritarian  states  into  accepting  at  least  the  rudiments  of  democratic  practices,  from  

holding  elections  to  permitting  the  formation  of  human  rights  councils  (also  see  

Levitsky  and  Way  2010;  Bunce  and  Wolchik  2011).  Although  these  practices  are  

intended  to  be  little  more  than  a  ‘façade’,  their  unintended  consequence  is  to  open  up  

authoritarian  regimes  to  scrutiny  from  domestic  and  international  audiences  (Ritter  

2015:  63).  If  authoritarian  regimes  are  to  maintain  the  material  benefits  of  ties  with  

Western  states,  from  arms  to  aid,  then  they  must  open  up  a  space  for  non-­‐violent  

opposition  to  emerge  –  the  structural  context  of  international  liberalism  provides  an  

opening  within  which  domestic  non-­‐violent  opposition  can  mobilize.  Sharon  Nepstad  

(2011:  129-­‐31)  complements  Ritter’s  analysis  of  the  structural  factors  that  ‘open  the  

door’  to  non-­‐violent  protest  movements  through  attention  to  the  actions  of  state  

security  forces.  For  Nepstad  (2011,  2013),  it  is  these  actions  that  largely  determine  the  

success  or  failure  of  non-­‐violent  movements.  Defections  from,  or  the  unreliability  of,  

security  forces  are  far  more  likely  when  opposition  protests  are  non-­‐violent,  

particularly  if  this  is  combined  with  coercive  forces  that  have  little  stake  in  the  regime  

and  that  share  forms  of  identity  with  opposition  movements,  such  as  a  common  religion  

or  ethnicity  (Nepstad  2013:  339,  342-­‐3).3  

 

This  article  combines  the  literature  on  non-­‐violent  protest  with  existing  work  on  

revolutions  in  order  to  assess  the  causes  and  outcomes  of  the  2011  Arab  Uprisings.  It  

does  so  by  highlighting  the  centrality  of  three  causal  factors:  first,  the  role  of  

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international  dynamics  in  providing  the  context  for  the  revolutions;  second,  the  critical  

nature  of  the  hold  of  elites  over  state  coercive  apparatuses;  and  third,  the  ways  in  which  

opposition  movements  maintained  high  levels  of  participation,  in  part  because  of  their  

use  of  information  and  communication  technologies,  but  lacked  sufficient  cohesion  to  

foster  projects  of  state  transformation.  Taken  together,  these  three  factors  illustrate  the  

need  for  analyses  that  stresses  the  role  of  international  context,  coercive  solidarity,  and  

the  organizational  coherence  of  an  opposition  –  in  that  order.  The  next  section  of  the  

paper  discusses  these  factors  in  turn.  The  conclusion  extends  this  analysis  by  assessing  

the  divergent  outcomes  of  the  Arab  Uprisings  and  what  their  trajectories  tell  us  about  

the  place  of  revolution  in  the  contemporary  world.    

 

International  dynamics  

The  first  contention  of  this  article  is  that  international  dynamics  acted  as  the  precipitant  

cause  of  the  2011  Arab  Uprisings.  This  section  concentrates  on  Egypt  both  for  reasons  

of  space  and  because  Egypt  is,  for  most  observers,  the  ‘pivotal  case’  (Bunce  2013)  

within  the  2011  revolutionary  wave.  There  are  three  ways  in  which  international  

dynamics  fuelled  the  2011  uprising  in  Egypt.  First,  client-­‐patron  relations  destabilized  

the  legitimacy  of  the  Egyptian  state.  Most  notably,  Egypt’s  ties  to  the  United  States  and  

Israel  were  deeply  unpopular  amongst  the  general  public.  In  the  years  leading  up  to  the  

Arab  Uprisings,  Egypt  was  the  second  largest  recipient  of  US  aid  (worth  around  $1  

billion  dollars  per  year  in  military  aid  alone),  one  of  the  main  sites  for  the  torture  and  

rendition  of  suspected  al-­‐Qaida  suspects,  and  a  backer  of  Israeli  policies  in  the  region,  

including  the  blockade  of  Gaza.4  These  policies  generated  a  sense  of  alienation  between  

the  regime  and  the  people.  According  to  the  2010  Pew  Global  Attitudes  Survey,  82%  of  

Egyptians  strongly  disapproved  of  the  United  States  (up  from  69%  five  years  earlier).  

Opposition  to  the  regime’s  support  for  the  US  and  Israel  also  found  its  way  onto  the  

street:  there  were  large  scale  protests  in  solidarity  with  the  second  Palestinian  intifada  

in  2000  and  even  larger  protests  following  the  onset  of  the  2003  Iraq  war.  These  

protests  helped  to  forge  ties  that,  in  turn,  sustained  the  2011  uprising  (Gunning  and  

Baron  2013;  Cole  2014;  Ritter  2015).    

 

A  second  international  component  of  the  2011  uprising  in  Egypt  can  be  found  in  the  

reforms  instituted  by  the  Mubarak  regime  in  response  to  international  dynamics.  

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During  the  1990s,  pressure  from  international  financial  institutions  to  ‘open  up’  saw  the  

Mubarak  regime  institute  a  range  of  neoliberal  policies:  the  reduction  of  tariffs,  the  

abandoning  of  interest  rate  controls,  and  the  removal  of  import  quotas  (Dodge  2012;  

Tripp  2013;  Cole  2014).  This  served  to  intensify  state  dependence  on  Suez,  aid,  

remittances,  and  tourism,  making  the  Egyptian  economy  more  susceptible  to  

international  markets.  A  dip  in  commodity  prices  during  the  mid-­‐1990s  forced  the  state  

to  further  leverage  its  debt  and  reduce  public  expenditure.  The  subsequent  austerity  

measures  prompted  a  decline  in  living  standards  for  much  of  the  population,  even  as  a  

‘network  of  privilege’  (many  of  whom  were  associated  with  Gamal  Mubarak,  the  

President’s  son),  used  personal  connections  with  state  brokers  to  secure  lucrative  

contracts  (Cole  2014:  36-­‐42).  The  conspicuous  consumption  of  this  elite  network  meant  

that  they  were  increasingly  seen  as  a  minority  caste  operating  outside,  or  on  top  of,  civil  

society.  At  the  same  time,  worsening  living  standards  stimulated  opposition  around  the  

loss  of  dignity  (al-­‐karama)  associated  with  the  degrading  of  social  conditions  

(Alexander  2011:  5-­‐8).  Between  2004-­‐8,  Egypt  went  through  the  most  sustained  period  

of  labor  unrest  in  its  history:  over  1.7  million  Egyptians  took  part  in  nearly  2000  strikes  

(Ritter  2015:  160).  Although  the  scale  of  this  unrest  dropped  in  the  years  immediately  

preceding  the  2011  uprising,  the  significance  of  the  strikes  lay  in  the  forging  of  robust  

opposition  networks  and  the  challenges  these  posed  to  state  authority  (Beinin  and  

Vairel  2013;  Gunning  and  Baron  2013;  Cole  2014).    

 

The  implementation  of  neoliberalism  in  Egypt  went  hand-­‐in-­‐hand  with  the  

implementation  of  ‘façade  democracy’.  Following  the  end  of  the  Cold  War,  democracy  

promotion  assumed  a  higher  profile  for  many  Western  states,  particularly  the  US,  and  

international  organizations  (Levitsky  and  Way  2010;  Ritter  2015).  Although  democracy  

promotion  was  often  ‘low  intensity’,  it  led  the  Mubarak  regime  to  permit  the  formation  

of  a  number  of  human  rights  groups.  It  also  led  to  the  holding  of  multi-­‐party  elections.  

These  elections  were  not  ‘level  playing  fields’  –  to  the  contrary,  competition  was  ‘real,  

but  unfair’  (Levitsky  and  Way  2010:  5).  But  even  if  incumbent  power  was  skewed  

through  control  of  the  media,  superior  spending  power,  intimidation,  and,  occasionally,  

outright  coercion  (Levitsky  and  Way  2010:  13,  62-­‐6,  72),  Mubarak’s  regime  was  

nonetheless  forced  to  recognize  a  legal  opposition.  In  the  2005  elections,  the  Muslim  

Brotherhood  won  every  parliamentary  seat  in  which  they  entered  a  candidate.  Even  

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given  an  environment  of  deeply  circumscribed  competition,  opposition  victories  

became  a  regular  feature  of  Egyptian  politics  during  the  late  2000s.  In  November  2010,  

allegations  of  vote  rigging  by  Mubarak’s  National  Democratic  Party  (NDP)  intended  to  

limit  its  electoral  defeat  only  served  to  further  weaken  Mubarak’s  position.  In  turn,  

these  defeats  marked  a  shift  in  opposition  strategies  away  from  direct  confrontation  

with  the  state  towards  the  embracing  of  formal  constitutional  and  democratic  

procedures  (Ritter  2015:  131).  In  sum:  the  structural  conditions  forged  by  changing  

international  dynamics  constructed  a  new  operating  environment  that  served  to  

delegitimize  the  regime  and  prompt  a  shift  in  opposition  strategies  (Ritter  2015:  132).  

This  not  only  raised  levels  of  day-­‐to-­‐day  opposition  to  the  Mubarak  regime,  it  also  

served  to  make  processes  such  as  elections  much  more  important.  Opposition  

movements  watched  closely  as  authoritarian  regimes  were  ousted  through  the  ballot  

box  in  Serbia,  Ukraine,  and  Georgia  during  the  2000s.  The  high  degree  of  leverage  

enjoyed  by  Western  states  and  international  organizations  over  the  Egyptian  state  

regime  meant  that  such  dynamics  also  worked  to  destabilize  the  Mubarak  regime  

(Levitsky  and  Way  2010:  71-­‐2).    

 

The  final  way  that  international  dynamics  served  as  the  precipitant  cause  of  the  2011  

uprisings  was  through  the  power  of  example,  whether  this  came  about  through  

demonstration  effect  or  deliberate  emulation  (Beissinger  2007;  Patel,  Bunce,  and  

Wolchik  2011;  Weyland  2012).  In  the  post-­‐Cold  War  era,  revolutionary  waves  appear  to  

be  intensifying  as  liberal  markets,  democratization,  and  ideas  of  individual  autonomy  

(as  vested  in  the  human  rights  regime)  foster  a  set  of  transgressive  repertoires  that  

threaten  the  hold  of  authoritarian  regimes  (Beck  2011;  Beissinger  2014).  The  Arab  

Uprisings  were  the  latest  in  a  long  wave  of  revolutions  that  encompassed  the  collapse  of  

communism  in  Eastern  and  Central  Europe  as  well  as  later  movements  in  Serbia,  

Georgia,  Ukraine,  Lebanon,  and  elsewhere.  In  early  2011,  the  demonstration  effect  of  

the  protests  in  Tunisia  and  Egypt  spread  quickly  around  the  region  and  beyond,  

spurring  movements  in  Mauritania,  Djibouti,  and  Sudan  as  well  as  those  in  Bahrain,  

Syria,  Yemen,  Oman,  Libya,  and  Jordan.  This  effect  was  sustained  by  the  transnational  

diffusion  of  revolutionary  repertoires,  whether  through  impersonal  networks  (such  as  

forms  of  media)  or  the  personal  connections  fostered  by  protestors  in  different  

countries  (Bunce  and  Wolchik  2007:  93-­‐7;  Tarrow  2012:  174).  These  transnational  

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networks  circulated  strategies,  slogans,  and  forms  of  organization.  They  also  formed  

part  of  a  ‘transnational  public  sphere’  that  fostered  a  unified  set  of  ‘Arab  issues’  (Lynch  

2011:  302;  Lynch  2012:  10-­‐1).  Media  outlets,  from  al-­‐Jazeera  to  the  independent  

Egyptian  newspaper  Al-­‐Masry  Al-­‐Youm,  reported  where  the  mainstream  media  could  

not,  evading  state  capture  and  helping  to  galvanize  new  solidarities  (Lynch  2011:  309;  

Lynch  2012:  11).  In  this  way,  a  new  media  environment  served  as  a  direct  interface  

between  publics  and  elites,  helping  to  promote  solidarities  between  opposition  groups  

in  different  countries  and,  in  turn,  working  as  ‘emotional  triggers’  that  decreased  fear  of  

the  regime,  while  heightening  feelings  of  hope  and  solidarity  within  opposition  

movements.  All  around  the  region,  protestors  chanted  ‘We  are  not  afraid’  during  ‘Days  

of  Rage’  intended  to  foster  not  just  domestic  uprisings,  but  a  transnational  

revolutionary  wave  (Bellin  2012:  136;  Pearlman  2013).    

 

The  role  of  the  coercive  apparatus  

Opposition  groups  around  the  region  were,  therefore,  given  space  to  manoeuvre  by  the  

‘expanded  access’  fostered  by  shifts  in  international  ties  and  the  ‘unstable  alignments’  

that  arose  from  the  failure  of  regimes  to  cope  effectively  with  these  shifts  (Tarrow  

2012:  78-­‐80;  also  see  Ritter  2015).  But  international  dynamics  did  not  cause  the  

revolutions  by  themselves.  Crucial  to  the  emergence  of  the  revolutionary  wave  in  2011  

was  the  weakening  of  the  region’s  ‘neo-­‐patrimonial’  regimes,  which  combined  

personalized  rule  with  a  degree  of  legal-­‐rational  functioning  (Eisenstadt  1973;  Weber  

1978[1922]).  For  many  years,  these  regimes  appeared  stable,  so  much  so  that  a  good  

deal  of  the  literature  on  the  region  revolved  around  the  resilience  of  authoritarianism  in  

the  Middle  East  (e.g.  Bellin  2004).  However,  over  time,  patrimonial  rule,  personality  

cults,  and  the  use  of  arbitrary  force  failed  to  substitute  for  the  lack  of  institutional  

buffers  between  exclusionary  states  and  civil  societies  (Bellin  2004:  145-­‐6).  The  lack  of  

intermediate  associations  between  state  and  society  meant  that  elites  were  insulated  

from  the  people,  finding  few  effective  channels  by  which  to  meet  grievances  and  

institutionalize  contestation.  This  served  to  ‘hollow  out’  state-­‐society  relations,  making  

regimes  vulnerable  to  surges  of  discontent  from  below.  Such  discontent,  ranging  from  

strikes  to  assassinations  and  from  flash  mobs  to  occupations,  was  a  regular  feature  of  

contentious  politics  in  the  region,  even  if  its  main  effect  was  to  strengthen  the  position  

of  the  security  apparatus.  States  in  the  region  could  subjugate  their  people,  but  they  

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lacked  the  institutional  depth  to  regulate  society  efficiently.  In  short,  they  were  ‘fierce’,  

but  not  ‘strong’  (Ayubi  1995:  xi).    

 

This  combination  of  changing  international  dynamics  and  state  vulnerability  combined  

to  generate  a  systemic  crisis  in  many  states  in  the  region,  as  illustrated  again  by  the  

example  of  Egypt.  Before  the  2011  uprising,  the  legitimacy  of  the  Egyptian  state  rested  

on  three  main  pillars:  the  1952  revolution;  the  role  of  the  military  in  freeing  Egypt  from  

Western  hegemony  (particularly  the  nationalization  and  subsequent  conflict  over  Suez);  

and  the  ‘socialist  development’  policies  pursued  by  Nasser,  during  which  the  state  took  

over  the  planning,  coordination,  and  management  of  production.  This  had  the  effect  of  

demobilizing  social  forces,  including  private  landholders  and  the  bourgeoisie,  by  using  

land  reform  and  industrialization  as  tools  for  exerting  state  authority  over  economic  

activities  (Dodge  2012:  6-­‐7).5  It  also  led  to  reasonable  levels  of  state-­‐led  growth,  

fortified  by  price  subsidies  that  made  basic  commodities  affordable  to  the  majority  of  

the  population.  State  income  was  further  generated  through  aid,  particularly  from  the  

US,  which  as  indicated  above,  paid  handsomely  in  exchange  for  Egypt’s  recognition  of  

Israel  following  the  1979  Camp  David  Accords,  its  opposition  to  Iran,  the  suppression  of  

Islamists  (including  the  execution  of  the  ‘Islamist  Lenin’  –  Sayyid  Qutb),  and  the  regular  

passage  of  US  warships  through  the  Suez  Canal.    

 

As  also  noted  above,  a  range  of  international  dynamics,  including  the  state’s  embracing  

of  neoliberalism  and  its  turn  to  ‘façade  democracy’,  served  to  eat  away  at  the  legitimacy  

of  the  Mubarak  regime.  A  vast  security  establishment  was  constructed  on  the  back  of  

two  million  informants,  who  underpinned  an  extensive  system  of  policing,  state  

security,  and  state-­‐sponsored  gangs  (baltagiyya).  At  the  same  time,  demographic  

changes  (particularly  population  growth)  placed  additional  burdens  on  the  state.  By  

2011,  around  one  third  of  the  Egyptian  population  was  aged  15-­‐29  (Shehata  2011:  28;  

also  see  Cole  2014).  This  exerted  considerable  pressures  on  job  markets,  just  as  the  

state  was  becoming  more  neoliberal,  more  personalistic,  and  more  repressive.  In  2009,  

unemployment  in  the  region  reached  nearly  25%;  many  more  were  in  informal,  

insecure  work  (Goldstone  2011:  12;  Gunning  and  Baron  2013:  149).  Unemployment  

rates  were  even  higher  amongst  young  people  and  disproportionately  felt  within  the  

middle  class  –  college  graduates  in  Egypt  were  ten  times  more  likely  to  have  no  job  as  

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those  with  only  a  primary  school  education  (Goldstone  2011:  12).  Short-­‐term  triggers  

added  to  the  sense  of  state  failure.  Between  2008-­‐10,  food  prices  increased  by  over  a  

third  (Dodge  2012:  11;  Gunning  and  Baron  2013:  134).  The  simultaneous  removal  of  

food  subsidies  (the  bread  subsidy  alone  cost  the  state  $3  billion  per  year)  fuelled  

resentment  against  the  regime;  over  two-­‐fifths  of  Egyptians  lived  at  or  below  the  

poverty  line  (Abdelrahman  2013:  574;  Gunning  and  Baron  2013:  131).  Despite  the  

decline  in  its  economic  sovereignty  after  two  decades  of  neoliberal  reforms,  the  

legitimacy  of  the  Egyptian  state  was  tightly  bound  with  its  capacity  to  guarantee  a  basic  

standard  of  living.  It  was,  therefore,  particularly  susceptible  to  such  crisis.  To  most  

Egyptians,  it  seemed  like  the  state  had  abandoned  the  poor  for  the  sake  of  the  rich.    

 

By  2011,  Egypt,  like  many  other  states  in  the  region,  was  home  to  a  neo-­‐patrimonial  

state  sustained  by  ‘repressions,  payoffs,  and  elite  solidarity’  (Quandt  1998:  30).  

Networks  of  crony  capitalists  secured  profits  through  personal  connections,  while  the  

majority  of  the  population  had  seen  their  living  standards  fall,  often  quite  dramatically.  

State  and  society  were  held  together  only  through  an  extensive  coercive  apparatus  –  

and  it  was  this  apparatus  that  largely  determined  the  fate  of  the  protests.  While  state,  

military,  and  security  services  remained  aligned,  Mubarak’s  position  was  stable.  If  this  

alliance  fractured,  then  his  position  was  far  more  tenuous.  Despite  this  vulnerability,  the  

Egyptian  regime  was  slow  to  respond  to  the  threat  posed  by  the  December  2010  

protests  in  Tunisia,  even  after  the  Tunisian  President  Zine  Ben  Ali  stood  down  on  14th  

January.  On  25th  January,  protestors  called  for  a  ‘Day  of  Rage’,  chosen  because  it  was  a  

national  holiday  (Police  Day)  marking  the  anniversary  of  a  massacre  of  police  officers  

by  the  British  in  1952.  From  this  point  on,  protests  spread  in  both  breadth  (reaching  

Alexandria,  Suez,  Ismailia,  and  other  parts  of  the  country)  and  depth  (upscaling  from  

tens  of  thousands  to  hundreds  of  thousands  of  people).  Although  protestors  formally  

embraced  non-­‐violence  (silmiyya),  resistance  was  shown  to  state  forces  and  the  

baltagiyya,  not  least  in  the  popular  quarters  of  Cairo,  by  organized  groups  of  soccer  fans  

(‘Ultras’),  and  in  the  mass  burning  down  of  police  stations  around  the  country  (Ismail  

2012;  Dorsey  2012).6  Many  hundreds  of  protestors  were  killed  by  state  security  forces  

(Holmes  2012:  397-­‐9;  Gunning  and  Baron  2013:  2).    

 

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As  protests  intensified,  Mubarak’s  hold  on  power  was  weakened  by  contradictory  

dynamics  of  concession  and  repression.  On  the  concession  side:  the  President  promised  

to  resign  at  the  end  of  his  term  of  office;  on  the  repression  side:  violence  against  

protestors  escalated.  These  contradictory  dynamics  served  to  splinter  the  coercive  

apparatus,  sapping  Mubarak’s  support  within  the  police,  his  party,  and  the  military.  

Large  numbers  of  police  failed  to  show  up  for  work,  took  off  their  badges,  or  went  over  

to  the  protestors.  On  5th  February,  the  entire  executive  committee  of  the  NDP  was  

forced  to  resign,  including  Gamal  Mubarak.  As  the  protests  escalated,  the  military  

pursued  a  ‘double  game’:  permitting  protests  to  continue  (so  as  to  weaken  the  position  

of  state  officials  vis-­‐à-­‐vis  the  military),  while  simultaneously  containing  them  (so  as  to  

restrict  the  capacity  of  the  protests  to  radically  reshape  military  prerogatives)  (Stein  

2012:  24).  However,  the  removal  of  Gamal  Mubarak  and  his  associates  from  formal  

positions  of  authority  reduced  the  need  for  intra-­‐elite  competition.  At  the  same  time,  the  

close  association  drawn  between  the  protestors  struggle  and  the  military  (as  in  the  

notion  of  the  ‘one  hand’  shared  by  the  people  and  the  army  against  the  regime)  pushed  

the  military  closer  to  the  protests  (Stein  2012:  24).  At  first,  the  military  refused  to  fire  

on  the  protestors  and  protected  them  from  state-­‐sponsored  violence,  albeit  selectively.  

But  on  10th  February,  the  military  publicly  endorsed  the  people’s  ‘legitimate  demands’.  

Mubarak  resigned  the  next  day.  The  head  of  the  General  Intelligence  Service,  Omar  

Suleiman,  was  left  to  oversee  a  transfer  of  power  to  the  Supreme  Council  of  Armed  

Forces,  which  opened  negotiations  on  a  new  constitution  and  elections.    

 

These  events  make  clear  two  points.  First,  the  patrimonialism  of  the  Mubarak  regime  

made  it  vulnerable  to  both  elite  fracture  and  surges  of  discontent  –  it  was  despotically  

strong,  but  infrastructurally  weak  (Mann  1984;  Goodwin  2001).  The  gap  between  rich  

and  poor,  and  state  and  society,  plus  the  everyday  brutality  of  the  security  apparatus,  

made  the  regime  susceptible  to  extended  contention  from  below.  Such  contention  was  a  

regular  feature  of  Egyptian  political  life  for  many  decades;  it  took  increasingly  acute  

form  during  the  2000s  (Beinin  and  Vairel  2013).  During  this  period,  the  regime  was  

held  together  through  a  combination  of  elite  pacts  and  shared  rents.  This  highlights  the  

importance  of  a  second,  linked,  point:  the  defection  of  the  Egyptian  military  made  

Mubarak’s  position  untenable  (Bellin  2012:  130).  By  early  2011,  the  effectiveness  of  the  

Egyptian  state,  like  that  of  many  of  its  counterparts  in  North  Africa  and  the  Middle  East,  

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had  been  eroded  through  shifts  in  international  relations,  rising  levels  of  inequality,  

corruption,  cronyism,  and  widespread  contention.  In  this  context  of  weakening  state  

effectiveness,  the  defection  of  the  armed  forces  was  crucial.  Where  this  took  place  (as  in  

Tunisia  and  Egypt),  autocrats  were  ousted.  Where  the  military  and  the  regime  remained  

united,  protests  were  either  decompressed  (as  in  the  Gulf  monarchies)  or  became  

bloody  (as  in  Syria).  These  divergent  outcomes  are  the  subject  of  the  final  section  of  the  

paper.  For  now,  it  is  worth  noting  that  autocrats  in  the  region  often  sought  to  coup-­‐

proof  their  regimes  by  constructing  security  apparatuses  that  could  counter-­‐balance  the  

military  (Bou  Nassif  2014).  However,  even  as  this  strategy  reduced  the  likelihood  of  

coups  from  above,  it  made  autocrats  vulnerable  to  popular  surges  from  below  by  

reducing  the  stake  of  the  military  in  the  regime.  In  Egypt,  for  example,  the  spoils  of  the  

‘military  economy’  were  unevenly  distributed.  While  high-­‐ranking  officers  benefitted  

directly  from  their  close  relationship  with  state  and  corporate  elites,  junior  officers  and  

the  rank-­‐and-­‐file  were  left  out  of  the  spoils.  This,  in  turn,  made  them  more  likely  to  

defect  in  the  face  of  concerted  opposition  movements  (Nepstad  2013:  342-­‐3,  345).    

 

The  organizational  character  of  opposition  movements  

As  noted  in  the  previous  section,  it  is  often  claimed  that  contemporary  revolutionary  

movements  lack  the  coherence  of  previous  movements.  Indeed,  over  recent  years,  there  

has  been  a  pronounced  shift  away  from  the  hierarchical  vision  espoused  by  vanguard  

revolutionary  parties  towards  a  flatter  structure  associated  with  popular  coalitions.7  

Unsurprisingly,  therefore,  the  coalition  that  deposed  Mubarak  was  made  up  of  disparate  

forces,  including  labor  groups,  urban  youths,  students,  professionals,  and  religious  

groups,  which  were  only  loosely  organized.8  But  if,  as  argued  by  much  of  the  literature  

on  non-­‐violent  protest,  organizational  coherence  is  critical  to  the  success  of  popular  

coalitions  (e.g.  Pearlman  2011),  how  can  relatively  flat,  somewhat  amorphous  

movements  be  sustained?  Interrogation  of  the  ways  the  opposition  coalition  in  Egypt  

attempted  to  construct  a  coherent  movement  provides  a  number  of  insights  into  this  

question.    

 

During  the  2011  Arab  Uprisings,  it  is  argued,  popular  coalitions  were  unified  in  large  

part  through  information  and  communication  technologies  (e.g.  Brooke  2011;  Howard  

and  Hussain  2011;  Simmons  2011;  Walgrave,  Bennett,  Van  Laer,  and  Breunig  2011;  

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Hussain  and  Howard  2013).  Particularly  important  in  this  respect  was  the  role  played  

by  ‘wired  cosmopolitans’,  mostly  young,  well-­‐travelled,  technologically  savvy  

professionals,  who  coordinated  opposition  activities  and  translated  local  events  for  

foreign  media.  Three-­‐quarters  of  the  social  media  traffic  around  Egypt’s  ‘25  January’  

revolution  came  from  outside  the  region,  while  90%  of  tweets  about  the  uprising  

originated  from  outside  Egypt  (Aday,  Farrell,  Lynch,  Sides,  and  Freelon  2012:  11-­‐13);  

Brym,  Godbout,  Hoffbauer,  Menard,  and  Zhang  2014:  269-­‐70).  The  coordinating  role  of  

these  wired  cosmopolitans,  and  ICTs  more  generally,  is  a  crucial  issue  in  assessing  the  

organizational  character  of  the  protest  movements.  If  they  are  unable  to  sustain  unity,  

popular  coalitions  are  unlikely  to  generate  programmes  of  state  transformation,  even  if  

they  succeed  in  ousting  an  unpopular  ruler.  Indeed,  mass  participation,  often  hailed  as  a  

necessary  cause  of  both  non-­‐violent  protest  and  democratic  outcomes  (e.g.  Chenoweth  

and  Stephan  2011),  may  act  against  the  fostering  of  organizational  coherence.  Without  a  

means  of  uniting  a  fragmented,  often  hastily  constructed  opposition,  the  impact  of  

protests  is  likely  to  be  limited.  In  short:  opposition  requires  organizing.  For  some  

analysts  and  protestors,  ICTs  were  this  organizational  vehicle  during  the  2011  protests,  

providing  a  means  through  which  messages  were  shared,  grievances  were  aired,  and  

abuses  were  documented  (Howard  and  Hussain  2011:  36;  Cole  2014:  8-­‐13).  For  ICT  

enthusiasts,  technologies  have  the  capacity  to  perform  several  key  functions:  overcome  

collective  action  problems,  reshape  political  opportunities,  connect  previously  

fragmented  sites  of  opposition,  and  mobilize  people  to  action  (Ayres  1999;  Bennett  et  al  

2008;  Brooke  2011;  Simmons  2011;  Walgrave  et  al  2011;  Bennett  and  Segerberg  2013).  

In  this  way,  ICTs  are  said  to  have  transformed  the  organization,  vision,  and  strategies  of  

Arab  protest  movements.  By  fostering  movements  out  of  reach  of  formal  sites  of  

political  authority,  particularly  the  state,  and  by  sharing  information  both  immediately  

and  without  official  sanction,  it  is  argued  that  ICTs  provide  the  ‘digital  scaffolding’  for  a  

new  type  of  politics  (Simmons  2011:  590;  Hussain  and  Howard  2013:  64).    

 

As  with  the  adoption  by  many  Arab  opposition  movements  of  non-­‐violent  strategies,  the  

connection  between  ICTs  and  mass  protests  does  not  begin  with  the  2011  uprisings.  

Cell  phones  and  text  messages  played  an  important  role  in  the  ‘Orange  Revolution’  in  

Ukraine  in  2004.  And  social  media  began  to  be  seen  as  a  major  influence  on  mass  

uprisings  following  the  extensive  use  of  YouTube  during  the  2007  ‘Saffron  Revolution’  

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in  Burma,  the  2009  ‘Twitter  Revolution’  in  Moldova,  and  the  ‘Green  Revolution’  in  Iran  

later  that  year.  Such  associations  were  given  extra  impetus  by  a  high-­‐profile  speech  in  

2010  by  US  Secretary  of  State,  Hillary  Clinton  (2010),  who  argued  that  ‘the  spread  of  

information  networks  are  forming  a  new  nervous  system  for  our  planet’.  The  Internet,  

Clinton  claimed,  provided  the  first  ever  ‘global  networked  commons’.  Comparing  

bloggers  to  dissidents  and  social  media  to  samizdat,  Clinton  (2010)  argued  that  the  

Internet  ‘is  like  Radio  Free  Europe  on  steroids’.  She  went  on  to  announce  a  range  of  

policies  designed  to  break  down  ‘virtual  walls’  and  secure  ‘Internet  freedom’.  Leading  

advisers  such  as  Alec  Ross  and  Jared  Cohen  were  charged  with  pursuing  this  ‘21st  

century  statecraft’  (Cull  2013:  134).  There  were  well-­‐publicized  visits  to  Iraq  (where  

the  retinue  included  Jack  Dorsey,  founder  of  Twitter)  and  Colombia,  where  officials  met  

with  Oscar  Morales,  the  web  designer  who  used  Facebook  to  generate  a  campaign  

against  FARC  guerrillas.    

 

The  Arab  Uprisings,  therefore,  fit  smoothly  within  existing  academic  and  political  

understandings  of  the  relationship  between  ICTs  and  democratization.  But  to  what  

extent  did  such  technologies  help  to  cohere  opposition  groups?  Once  again,  it  is  worth  

examining  the  case  of  Egypt.  There  is  little  doubt  that  Facebook  played  some  role  in  

organizing  protests  in  Egypt.  The  Facebook  group  Kulina  Khaled  Said  (‘We  Are  All  

Khaled  Said’),  established  in  commemoration  of  a  blogger  murdered  by  Egyptian  police  

in  2010,  gathered  hundreds  of  thousands  of  members,  many  of  whom  took  part  in  

demonstrations  against  the  regime.  The  widely  circulated  autopsy  photo  of  Khaled  Said  

served  a  mobilizing  function  comparable  to  the  video  of  Nedā  Āghā-­‐Soltān,  the  Iranian  

protestor  shot  dead  by  police  during  the  2009  ‘Green  Revolution’,  which  became  a  

potent  point  of  connection  between  protestors  inside  the  country  and  transnational  

networks.  Such  points  of  connection  usually  circulated  outside  formal  media  outlets,  

whether  public  or  private,  many  of  which  were  distrusted  by  Arab  publics.  These  

informally  circulated  videos,  photos,  and  messages  served  as  ‘information  cascades’,  

highlighting  regime  brutality  and  fuelling  a  sense  of  outrage  (Lynch  2011,  2012).  They  

also  acted  as  connecting  nodes  between  otherwise  disparate  networks,  energizing  

empathetic  cascades  that  ratcheted  up  pressure  on  elites  to  ‘do  something’  (Walgrave  et  

al  2011:  329).  During  major  events,  such  as  the  removal  of  Hosni  Mubarak,  these  

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cascades  helped  to  foster  sharp  spikes  in  the  use  of  digital  media  (Hussain  and  Howard  

2013:  57;  Brym  et  al  2014:  270).  

 

Such  dynamics  certainly  worried  Arab  states.  At  the  end  of  January  2011,  the  Egyptian  

government  required  the  country’s  main  Internet  Service  Provider’s  (ISPs)  to  disable  

their  networks.  The  government  also  asked  Vodafone  for  details  on  subscribers  and  

used  the  network  to  send  out  pro-­‐regime  texts.  After  five  days,  however,  the  

government  lifted  its  blockade,  seeing  the  ban  as  igniting  rather  than  suppressing  

dissent.  In  other  words,  more  people  came  onto  the  streets  once  the  Internet  had  been  

disabled.  This  is  a  puzzling  outcome  given  claims  about  the  necessity  of  ICTs  in  

mobilizing  protest.  Some  protestors  may  have  been  able  to  workaround  the  blackout  via  

smartphones  or  alternative  means  of  communication  (Lynch  2012:  90).  For  the  most  

part,  though,  the  shutdown  worked.  But  if  protestors  are  supposed  to  have  required  

ICTs  in  order  to  solve  collective  action  problems,  connect  disparate  networks,  and  

coordinate  activities,  it  is  curious  that  protests  in  Egypt  intensified  during  the  period  in  

which  the  Internet  was  disabled.    

 

Perhaps  this  is  not  such  a  puzzle.  As  even  the  most  animated  cyber-­‐enthusiasts  accept,  

digital  data  leaves  an  audit  trail,  one  that  can  be  used  for  surveillance  and  censorship  as  

well  as  for  autonomy  and  transparency  (e.g.  Brooke  2011:  233-­‐5;  Lynch  2011:  306;  

Hussain  and  Howard  2013:  50,  60).  Social  media  is  often  appropriated  by  authoritarian  

governments  in  order  to  trace  protestors,  spread  propaganda,  and  monitor  the  

activities  of  protest  groups.  This  is  something  that  many  activists  appear  to  recognize.  

In  January  2011,  a  pamphlet  entitled  ‘How  to  Protest  Intelligently’  was  circulated  widely  

amongst  protest  groups  in  Egypt.  The  pamphlet  explicitly  asked  protestors  not  to  use  

Twitter,  Facebook,  YouTube,  or  other  websites  because,  ‘they  are  all  monitored  by  the  

Ministry  of  the  Interior’.9  After  the  2009  Green  Revolution,  the  Iranian  government  

formed  a  cybercrime  unit  charged  with  countering  the  ‘American  led  cyber-­‐war’  and  

arresting  those  guilty  of  spreading  ‘insults  and  lies’  about  the  regime  through  the  

Internet  (Morozov  2011:  10).  The  Chinese  government  has  constructed  a  ‘Great  

Firewall’  around  the  Internet  and  has  become  adept  at  initiating  ‘online  blockades’.  A  

number  of  authoritarian  states  are  well  versed  in  carrying  out  ‘Distributed  Denial  of  

Service’  attacks,  while  the  Internet  has  proved  to  be  a  valuable  source  of  authoritarian  

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propaganda.  Vladimir  Putin’s  United  Russia  party,  for  example,  enjoys  an  extensive  

online  presence,  using  the  Internet  as  a  tool  for  spreading  its  messages.  In  short,  

autocratic  regimes  are  skilled  practitioners  when  it  comes  to  adopting  ‘networked’  

techniques  of  surveillance  and  control  (MacKinnon  2011;  Morozov  2011).    

 

On  the  one  hand,  therefore,  ICTs  can  help  to  coordinate  revolutionary  protests.  On  the  

other  hand,  they  can  be  used  equally  well  to  disrupt  these  protests.  To  put  this  another  

way,  the  utility  of  ICTs  depends  on  how  they  are  embedded  within  wider  fields  of  

action.  At  times,  ICTs  serve  as  ‘echo  bubbles’  rather  than  ‘tools  of  connection’,  

amplifying  in-­‐group  communication  and  reinforcing  existing  sentiments  (Pariser  2011;  

Aday  et  al  2012).  This  means  that  ICTs  can  foster  a  dialogue  of  the  deaf  as  easily  as  they  

encourage  a  unifying  narrative.  And  even  this  dialogue  takes  place  unevenly.  Internet  

penetration  rates  in  North  Africa  and  the  Middle  East  in  2011  were  not  particularly  

high.  Fewer  than  8%  of  Egyptians  were  registered  Facebook  users  in  April  2011,  while  

131,000  had  active  twitter  accounts  (0.15%  of  the  population);  less  than  10%  of  

Egyptians  say  that  Internet  news  sites  or  social  media  were  their  principal  sources  of  

information  during  the  2011  uprising  (Brym  et  al  2014:  269-­‐70).  This  may  be  a  

strategically  important  minority  (Howard  and  Hussain  2011:  47),  but  such  figures  still  

suggest  that  a  digital  divide  is  in  operation  which  is  a  long  way  removed  from  hopes  of  

fostering  a  single  virtual  commons.  Nor  is  there  evidence  that  the  ways  in  which  ICTs  

‘internationalize’  protests  by  connecting  local  struggles  with  transnational  circuits  had  a  

pronounced  effect  on  domestic  elites  (Brym  et  al  2014).  Those  who  see  ICTs  as  valuable  

instruments  of  mobilization  would  do  well  to  concentrate  less  on  social  media  (which  

are  rarely  used)  than  on  cell  phones  (which  are  commonplace).  And  they  would  do  even  

better  to  relax  assumptions  about  the  requirement  of  ICTs  to  revolutionary  movements.  

ICTs  are  good  at  generating  ‘weak  ties’  –  networks  of  (often  fleeting)  acquaintances  that  

‘likes’  or  ‘shares’  the  same  tastes  (Della  Porta  and  Mosca  2005).  They  are  less  good  at  

fostering  ‘strong  ties’  –  the  deep  connections  of  solidarity  and  commitment  that  

undergird  collective  protest  (Gladwell  2010;  Bennett  and  Segerberg  2013:  50).  This  

latter  form  of  connection,  best  forged  through  personal  ties  of  kinship  and  friendship,  or  

in  the  midst  of  struggle,  is  not  easily  made.  To  the  contrary,  it  costs.  And  it  is  not  

something  that  ICTs  foster  easily.    

 

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The  grander  claims  of  cyber-­‐enthusiasts  do  not,  therefore,  stand  up  to  scrutiny.  

Revolutions  always  contain  tools  of  communication:  stories,  rituals,  banners,  songs,  

cartoons,  graffiti,  and  posters  that  mobilize  protest  through  affective  cultural  

performances  (Selbin  2010;  Tarrow  2012;  Tripp  2013).  Sometimes  these  symbolic  

repertoires  are  articulated  through  words,  such  as  ‘patriot’  or  ‘citoyen’,  which  acted  as  

tools  of  certification  denoting  who  was  inside  and  outside  the  French  revolutionary  

struggle  (Tarrow  2012:  ch.  10).  Contemporary  examples  include  the  ‘Days  of  Rage’  that  

became  critical  points  of  identification  during  the  Arab  Uprisings.  At  other  times,  such  

repertoires  are  articulated  in  verse  and  song  –  the  importance  of  the  Egyptian  guitarist  

Ramy  Essam,  the  Tunisian  hip-­‐hop  artist  El  Général,  and  the  Syrian  musician  Ibrahim  

Qashoush  to  the  Arab  Uprisings  take  place  within  a  longer  tradition  of  revolutionary  

protest  music  (Clover  2009).  Whichever  form  such  tropes  take,  the  key  point  is  that  

analysts  of  opposition  movements  should  direct  attention  to  the  message  rather  than  

the  medium.  During  the  Arab  Uprisings,  it  was  not  ICTs  per  se,  but  the  integration  of  

these  technologies  within  wider  communicative  ecologies  based  on  strong,  personal  ties  

of  trust  that  enabled  protests  to  cohere  (Bennett  and  Segerberg  2013:  88,  196).  Most  

often,  protestors  gained  their  information  through  face-­‐to-­‐face  communication  or  via  

word-­‐of-­‐mouth  messages,  the  most  trusted  mediums  of  all.    

 

This  analysis  yields  two  points.  First,  like  many  contemporary  revolutionary  

movements,  the  organizational  character  of  the  popular  coalitions  in  North  Africa  and  

the  Middle  East  was  predominantly  horizontal  and  decentralized.  This  made  them  

highly  participatory.  But  participation  came  at  a  price.  Although  good  at  galvanizing  

protests  against  incumbents,  these  movements  were  less  successful  at  turning  mass  

protests  into  coherent,  enduring  opposition  forces.  As  a  result,  post-­‐uprising  pacts  were  

made  out  of  the  reach  of  the  popular  coalitions  that  had  been  at  the  heart  of  the  

protests.  Second,  the  use  of  ICTs  had  a  range  of  effects,  from  connecting  local  and  

transnational  networks  to  helping  construct  a  new  ‘ecology  of  dissent’  made  up  of  an  

‘associational  cluster’  of  activist  networks  (Bennett  and  Sederberg  2013:  199).  Crucially  

for  the  purposes  of  this  article,  although  ICTs  helped  to  raise  levels  of  participation  and,  

to  some  extent,  co-­‐ordinate  protests,  they  did  little  to  foster  coherent,  sustainable  

oppositional  movements  that  would  allow  protestors  to  maintain  pressure  on  their  

respective  regimes.  At  times,  ICTs  proved  to  be  a  useful  means  of  mobilizing  protestors.  

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But  they  did  not  help  with  the  task  of  generating  coherent  movements  able  to  sustain  

protest  over  the  long  haul.    

 

This  speaks  to  a  broader  issue  of  direct  concern  to  the  literature  on  non-­‐violent  protest.  

As  noted  in  the  previous  section,  some  scholarship  in  this  tradition  points  to  the  

importance  of  generating  large,  diverse  coalitions  (e.g.  Chenoweth  and  Stephan  2011);  

others  stress  the  need  for  internal  cohesion  within  the  protest  movement  (e.g.  Pearlman  

2011).  The  analysis  presented  in  this  article  suggests  that  each  part  of  this  literature  is  

looking  at  different  aspects  of  the  same  protest  cycle.  The  former  helps  to  explain  why  

some  revolutionary  movements  in  North  Africa  and  the  Middle  East  were  able  to  oust  

authoritarian  regimes  –  the  despots  who  led  these  regimes  served  as  a  common  enemy  

and,  thereby,  a  temporary  point  of  unity  around  which  diverse  coalitions  could  

mobilize.  The  latter  makes  clear  why,  after  autocrats  had  been  ousted,  many  

movements  were  unable  to  consolidate  their  victories.  The  diversity  of  the  coalition  that  

helped  them  succeed  in  the  first  phase  of  the  struggle  worked  against  them  in  the  

second  –  participants  shared  a  common  short-­‐term  goal  (to  oust  the  dictator),  but  not  a  

long-­‐term  vision  of  how  political,  economic,  and  symbolic  relations  were  to  be  reforged.  

As  a  result,  even  when  autocrats  were  overthrown,  the  aftermath  of  the  revolutions  saw  

elites  sidestep  revolutionary  coalitions,  decompress  their  challenge,  or  engage  them  in  

violent  struggle.  The  result,  as  the  next  section  shows,  was  considerable  divergence  in  

terms  of  the  outcomes  of  the  revolutions.10    

 

Revolution,  Non-­‐Violence  and  the  Arab  Uprisings  

The  three  issues  discussed  in  the  previous  section  –  international  dynamics,  the  role  of  

the  coercive  apparatus,  and  the  organizational  character  of  opposition  movements  –  

help  to  explain  both  why  the  Arab  Uprisings  took  place  and  why  many  of  them  have  

been  unsuccessful.  If  the  ‘minimum  condition’  (Hobsbawm  1986;  Stinchcombe  1999)  of  

revolutionary  success  is  the  takeover  of  the  principal  means  of  production,  means  of  

violence,  and  means  of  information  in  a  society,  only  Tunisia  has  passed  this  threshold.  

Despite  widespread  concern  about  the  gradual  pace  of  change  in  Tunisia,  the  Ben  Ali  

regime  has  been  ousted,  a  new  constitution  is  in  place,  multi-­‐party  elections  have  been  

held,  the  military  has  been  confined  to  barracks,  the  political  police  has  been  disbanded,  

and  a  range  of  commissions  have  been  established  to  tackle  corruption  and  related  

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activities.  These  are  no  small  measures.  In  Egypt,  by  contrast,  events  since  the  

overthrow  of  Mubarak  have  demonstrated  the  salience  of  ‘old  politics’  over  ‘new  

politics’  as  the  military,  existing  parties,  mosques,  and  other  entrenched  interests  have  

dominated  the  political  landscape.  In  Yemen,  although  President  Saleh  was  forced  to  

resign  in  early  2012,  demands  for  further  concessions  and,  in  some  areas,  secession  

speak  to  the  likelihood  of  ongoing  contention.  Libya  too  is  undergoing  a  period  of  

considerable  civil  strife,  although  this  does  not  match  the  scale  of  the  bloodshed  in  

Syria,  where  the  failure  of  protestors  to  oust  President  Bashar  al-­‐Assad  has  led  to  the  

onset  of  a  brutal  civil  war,  one  that  has  been  internationalized  by  the  emergence  of  

‘Islamic  State’,  whose  military  campaigns  in  Syria  and  Iraq  has  prompted  intervention  

by  Western  states.11  Bahrain’s  uprising  was  crushed  by  a  combination  of  monarchical  

obduracy  and  Saudi  force.  Through  the  vehicle  of  the  Gulf  Cooperation  Council  (GCC),  

the  Saudi’s  sent  troops  and  police  into  Bahrain  in  order  to  secure  the  regime  against  

protest,  following  this  with  large  supplies  of  petrodollars  in  an  attempt  to  appease  

protestors.  The  Saudi’s  also  gave  Jordan  a  $1  billion  ‘gift’  and  offered  a  $4  billion  ‘grant’  

to  Egypt,  while  mollifying  domestic  unrest  through  a  reform  package  worth  around  

$100  billion  (Lynch  2012:  131;  Matthiesen  2013:  129;  Brownlee  et  al  2015:  54).  GCC  

states  also  stoked  sectarian  identities  in  an  attempt  to  divide  opposition  coalitions  

(Matthiesen  2013;  Wehrey  2013).  This  threefold  strategy  of  repression,  aid,  and  

sectarian  polarization  was  initiated  in  a  number  of  Gulf  Monarchies,  including  Kuwait,  

Morocco,  and  Jordan,  with  similar  results:  the  decompression  of  protest.  Together,  GCC  

states  promised  (even  if  they  did  not  always  deliver)  billions  of  dollars  of  aid  around  the  

region,  while  simultaneously  clamping  down  on  opposition  groups  and  mobilizing  

sectarian  affinities  in  a  counterrevolutionary  strategy  that  acted  as  a  brake  on  the  

uprisings.12    

 

Overall,  therefore,  the  immediate  outcomes  of  the  2011  uprisings  can  be  split  into  four  

main  groups:  first,  successful  revolution  (Tunisia);  second,  mixed  outcomes  in  which  

autocrats  have  been  deposed,  but  transformation  has  been  limited  (Egypt,  Yemen);  

third,  the  decompression  of  protest  through  a  combination  of  ‘authoritarian  upgrading’  

(Saudi  Arabia,  Bahrain,  Kuwait,  Morocco,  Jordan)  (Heydemann  2013);  and  fourth,  the  

emergence  of  violent  polarization  (Libya,  Syria).  As  noted  above,  no  state  in  the  region  

bar  Tunisia  meets  the  minimum  criteria  of  revolutionary  change,  let  alone  the  

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‘maximum  condition’  of  revolutionary  success,  understood  as  the  systemic  

transformation  of  economic,  political,  and  symbolic  institutions  (Hobsbawm  1986:  24).  

All  in  all,  two-­‐thirds  of  the  region’s  autocrats  have  survived  the  uprisings  and  even  

where  they  haven’t,  as  in  Libya,  Syria,  and  Yemen,  the  outcome  has  been  ruinous  

(Geddes,  Wright  and  Frantz  2014:  326).  In  many  cases,  ‘dissidents  made  the  first  noises,  

but  soldiers  had  the  last  word’  (Brownlee  et  al  2015:  63).    

 

In  addition  to  the  factors  outlined  in  earlier  sections  of  this  article,  there  are  two  main  

reasons  for  this  lack  of  success.  First,  revolutionaries  in  states  outside  the  original  onset  

of  the  crisis  overstated  the  possibilities  of  revolutionary  success.  The  uncertainty  

generated  by  the  ousting  of  Ben  Ali  in  Tunisia  generated  ‘cognitive  shortcuts’:  the  

propensity  to  place  too  much  weight  on  dramatic  news  from  elsewhere  and  the  drawing  

of  firm  conclusions  from  relatively  sparse  information  (Weyland  2012:  920-­‐4).  This  is  a  

common  theme  in  revolutionary  waves,  but  it  was  heightened  in  2011  by  two  additional  

factors:  the  despotic  character  of  states  in  the  region,  which  meant  that  they  had  few  

institutional  filters  through  which  to  channel  information  and  meet  grievances;  and  the  

relatively  weak  organizational  capacity  of  the  protest  movements,  as  documented  in  the  

previous  section.  Second,  once  the  wave  had  begun,  regimes  learned  quickly.  

Oftentimes,  revolutionary  waves  become  less  successful  the  further  they  travel  from  

their  original  point  of  instigation  (Beissinger  2007;  Patel,  Bunce,  and  Wolchik  2011;  

Della  Porta  and  Tarrow  2012;  Weyland  2012).  This  is  the  case  for  three  reasons:  

because  revolutionaries  enact  their  protests  in  increasingly  inhospitable  settings;  

because  authoritarian  regimes  learn  how  to  demobilize  their  challengers;  and  because  

authoritarian  state-­‐society  relations  do  not  disappear  overnight.  In  this  sense,  the  

Tunisian  uprising  was  successful  not  just  because  of  favorable  international  dynamics,  

the  defection  of  the  coercive  apparatus,  or  the  relative  coherence  of  its  opposition,  but  

because  it  was  the  first  such  struggle  in  the  region.    

 

This  analysis  suggests  that  those  studying  both  revolutions  and  non-­‐violent  protests  

should  be  concerned  less  with  the  fact  of  the  emergence  of  a  revolutionary  wave  than  

with  the  timing  of  its  emergence.  This,  in  turn,  provides  two  particular  lessons  for  those  

working  on  non-­‐violent  protests.  First,  to  date,  much  civil  resistance  theory  and  practice  

has  focused  on  ways  to  oust  authoritarian  rulers.  Less  attention  has  been  paid  to  what  

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happens  after  rulers  have  been  deposed.  The  divergent  outcomes  of  the  Arab  Uprisings  

make  clear  that  just  as  much  attention  should  be  paid  to  developing  post-­‐conflict  visions  

and  strategies  as  there  is  on  constructing  opposition  movements.  It  is  one  thing  to  oust  

a  dictator;  it  is  another  to  construct  viable  economies  and  systems  of  governance.  

Wendy  Pearlman  (2011)  has  noted  the  importance  of  organizational  coherence  to  

ousting  dictators.  But  this  is  just  as  important  to  the  post-­‐struggle  stage.  In  the  

aftermath  of  a  successful  revolution,  diverse  coalitions  must  be  molded  into  well-­‐

ordered  movements  that  are  able  to  govern.  Key  to  their  success  is  the  articulation  of  a  

clear  vision  that  is  able  to  go  beyond  opposition  and  sustain  a  new  government.  Second,  

those  non-­‐violent  protest  movements  operating  once  a  protest  cycle  is  underway  

should  be  aware  that  autocrats  are  sometimes  fast  learners.  As  a  result,  techniques  and  

strategies  that  work  in  the  early  stages  of  a  revolutionary  wave  are  unlikely  to  work  

once  the  wave  is  underway.  In  these  circumstances,  rather  than  replicating  earlier  

techniques  and  strategies  of  contention,  protestors  will  need  to  innovate  in  order  to  

keep  pace  with  autocratic  learning.13        

 

That  the  outcomes  of  the  2011  uprisings  have  been,  in  the  short-­‐term,  one  of  largely  

unsuccessful  revolution  speaks  to  a  broader  set  of  questions  about  the  place  of  

revolution  in  the  contemporary  world.  In  general  terms,  the  2011  uprisings  bare  a  

family  resemblance  to  the  ‘negotiated  revolutions’  that  have  become  regular  features  of  

the  post-­‐Cold  War  world  (Lawson  2004,  2005).  ‘Modern  revolutions’,  a  form  of  social  

transformation  that  emerged  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  and,  it  is  

argued,  declined  in  the  late  twentieth  century,  are  often  defined  as  ‘rapid,  basic  

transformations  of  a  society’s  state  and  class  structures,  accompanied  and  in  part  

carried  through  by  class  based  revolts  from  below’  (Skocpol  1979:  287).  The  core  

feature  of  modern  revolutions  was  that  they  sought  to  transform  political,  economic,  

and  symbolic  fields  of  action  simultaneously.  Negotiated  revolutions,  by  contrast,  seek  

to  transform  political  and  symbolic  fields  of  action,  but  without  a  concomitant  

commitment  to  a  program  of  economic  transformation  (Lawson  2004,  2005).    

 

There  are  five  main  components  of  negotiated  revolutions:  their  origins  in  a  systemic  

crisis  in  which  the  role  of  the  coercive  apparatus  is  decisive;  their  rejection  of  armed  

confrontation;  their  formal  acceptance  of  non-­‐violence;  their  welcoming  by  liberal  

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international  actors;  and  their  fostering  of  weak  rather  than  strong  states  (Lawson  

2004:  227-­‐34;  Lawson  2005:  482-­‐91).  All  five  of  these  components  have  been  present,  

albeit  in  varying  degrees,  in  the  2011  Arab  Uprisings.  First,  the  neo-­‐patrimonial  

structure  of  regimes  in  the  region  made  them  vulnerable  to  changes  in  international  

relations,  the  defection  of  the  coercive  apparatus,  and  popular  mobilization.  What  made  

the  2011  uprisings  distinct  from  previous  protest  cycles  was  the  defection  of  the  

coercive  apparatus  –  without  the  support  of  the  military,  figures  like  Ben  Ali  and  

Mubarak  could  not  survive.  In  contrast,  where  the  military  remained  allied  to  state  

elites,  regimes  were  able  to  endure.  Second,  even  though  protestors  in  some  states  

forcibly  deposed  their  regimes,  few  opposition  coalitions  had  the  capacity  to  engage  the  

state  in  armed  confrontation.  In  part,  this  was  because  of  the  illegitimacy  of  violence  

through  its  association  with  the  security  apparatus.  In  part,  it  was  because  the  

opposition,  with  the  exception  of  Libya  and  Syria,  did  not  contain  a  faction  willing  to  

take  up  arms  in  a  concerted  way.14  This,  in  turn,  links  to  a  third  point  –  the  formal  

association  of  the  movements  with  non-­‐violence.  This  embracing  of  non-­‐violent  

repertoires  made  the  Arab  Uprisings  more  palatable  to  liberal  international  actors  –  the  

fourth  characteristic  of  negotiated  revolutions.  As  Barack  Obama  put  it  in  the  aftermath  

of  Mubarak’s  removal  from  office,  ‘it  was  the  moral  force  of  nonviolence  –  not  terrorism,  

not  mindless  killing,  but  nonviolence  …  that  bent  the  arc  of  history’  (in  Ritter  2015:  

169).  Although  support  for  the  uprisings  varied  from  case  to  case,  there  was  a  general  

sense  amongst  liberal  international  actors  that  the  uprisings  were  legitimate,  both  in  

terms  of  their  goal  of  ousting  despotic  regimes  and  in  their  formal  support  for  non-­‐

violence.  Finally,  because  of  the  limited  organizational  capacity  of  opposition  

movements,  even  when  depots  have  been  ousted,  state  transformation  has  been  limited.  

If  the  ‘robustness’  of  authoritarianism  in  the  region  has  been  broken,  the  outlook  for  

democratization  is,  at  best,  patchy  (Bellin  2012).15    

 

The  Arab  Uprisings,  therefore,  share  a  familiar  revolutionary  heritage.  In  sociological  

terms,  they  sit  largely  within  the  framework  established  by  the  1989  negotiated  

revolutions  that  ousted  state  socialism  in  Central  and  Eastern  Europe,  even  if  they  

depart  from  this  schema  in  their  lower  levels  of  negotiation  and  higher  levels  of  

violence.  In  terms  of  wider  currents  of  revolutionary  theory,  the  2011  uprisings  belong  

to  a  stream  of  thought  that  both  reinforces  the  legacy  of  1989  and  predates  it.  In  broad  

  25  

terms,  both  the  Arab  Uprisings  and  the  collapse  of  state  socialism  can  be  said  to  sit  

within  a  family  of  ‘civilizing  and  democratizing’  (Selbin  2010)  revolutions  whose  roots  

can  be  traced  to  the  American  Revolution  of  1776.  This  places  them  within  a  distinct  

revolutionary  tradition,  one  associated  not  only  with  1776,  but  also  with  the  1848  

‘Springtime  of  Nations’.  This  tradition  has  further  historical  echoes,  not  least  in  the  

‘constitutional  revolutions’  that  took  place  during  the  early  part  of  the  20th  century  in  

Russia,  Iran,  Portugal,  Mexico,  China,  and  the  Ottoman  Empire  (Kurzman  2008).  As  

noted  in  the  introduction  to  this  article,  these  cases  served  as  the  wellspring  of  later  

movements  associated  with  non-­‐violent  protest.  In  the  short-­‐term,  the  constitutionalists  

were  overthrown  by  an  alliance  of  military  elites,  business  groups,  and  great  powers,  in  

most  cases  after  extended  periods  of  civil  strife.  However,  even  if  the  revolutions  of  

1905-­‐12  were  defeated  in  the  short  run,  their  main  rationale  (political  liberalization)  

was  more  successful  in  the  long  run.  That  may  also  be  the  case  for  the  2011  Arab  

Uprisings.  As  a  whole,  the  region  is  stuck  between  fragile  pacts,  illiberal  renewal,  and  

unmet  grievances.  The  ‘deep  state’  that  characterizes  the  institutional  connections  

between  power  brokers  in  the  military,  the  state,  the  security  services,  and  the  private  

sector  will  not  dissolve  easily.16  However,  these  connections  will  have  to  cohabit  with  

(at  least  partial)  democracies  and  (at  least  partially)  reformed  monarchies  in  a  volatile  

environment  in  which  alliances  are  being  renegotiated  (Lynch  2012:  9).  At  the  same  

time,  mobilized  publics  appear  willing  to  maintain  ‘pressure  from  below’  in  an  attempt  

to  secure  lasting  changes  to  the  status  quo.  The  conflict  between  authoritarian  elites  

and  democratic  publics  is  likely  to  be  a  regular  feature  of  political  life  in  the  region  over  

upcoming  years  –  the  outcomes  of  the  2011  Arab  Uprisings  will  be  unfolding  for  some  

time  to  come.  

 

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the  Third  World:  A  New  Kind  of  Revolution?”  Third  World  Quarterly  15(3):  403-­‐26.                                                                                                                        1  Many  thanks  to  Amnon  Aran,  Daniel  Ritter,  Nawal  Mustafa,  Neil  Ketchley,  the  Mobilization  peer  reviewers,  and  especially  Sharon  Nepstad  for  their  insightful  comments  on  earlier  drafts  of  this  article.  Thanks  also  to  participants  at  presentations  of  the  paper  at  LSE,  Reading  University,  the  International  Studies  Association  convention  in  San  Diego,  the  Social  Science  History  Association  conference  in  Toronto,  and  the  World  Congress  of  Sociology  in  Yokohama.  The  paper  is  much  improved  for  its  exposure  to  these  various  forms  of  public  scrutiny.    2  The  obvious  exception  is  the  revolutionary  strand  of  political  Islam,  which  often  combines  hierarchical  organization  with  an  equally  hierarchical  vision  (Bayat  2013:  ch.  12).    3  The  opposite  condition  also  holds  –  those  militaries  that  share  a  deeply  embedded  identity  with  a  ruling  elite  are  unlikely  to  defect.  The  obvious  example  in  the  context  of  the  Arab  Uprisings  is  Syria  (Brownlee,  Masoud,  and  Reynolds  2015:  55-­‐8,  61).  4  Unsurprisingly,  the  US  was  slow  to  fully  endorse  the  protests  against  Mubarak.  The  initial  message  from  the  White  House  was  that  the  US  supported  a  ‘managed’  or  ‘orderly’  transition  rather  than  a  popular  revolution  (Holmes  2012:  400;  Gerges  2013:  415-­‐6;  Tripp  2013:  99).  5  At  the  same  time,  the  military  became  a  powerful  economic  actor  in  its  own  right,  controlling  up  to  15%  of  the  Egyptian  economy  (Varol  2012:  346).  The  military  ran  farms  and  factories  (often  using  conscripts  as  free  labor),  and  owned  a  considerable  portfolio  of  real  estate.    6  These  examples  illustrate  that,  although  non-­‐violence  was  a  prescribed  tactic  of  the  protest  movement,  elements  within  it  were  willing  to  use  violence.  The  balance  to  be  struck  between  violent  and  non-­‐violent  protest  was  much  discussed  within  the  protest  (Lynch  2012:  91-­‐6;  Cole  2014:  151;  Gunning  and  Baron  2013:  193-­‐201).  It  is  important  to  note  that,  in  the  Arab  Uprisings  and  elsewhere,  there  is  often  no  straightforward  either-­‐or  between  violent  and  non-­‐violent  strategies.  Indeed,  these  strategies  have  often  existed  side-­‐by-­‐side  within  the  same  protest  movement  (as  in  South  Africa’s  African  National  Congress)  or  have  developed  from  one  to  the  other  (as  in  the  Philippines  during  the  1970s  and  1980s).  In  any  assessment  of  this  issue,  the  central  issue  revolves  around  whether  there  is  a  formal  embrace  of  non-­‐violence  by  the  main  strands  of  the  opposition.  For  most,  but  not  all,  protest  movements  in  the  Middle  East  and  North  Africa  during  the  2011  uprisings,  this  condition  holds.  7  Again,  radical  Islamist  groups  provide  the  main  exception.  However,  these  groups  tended  not  to  be  the  main  factions  within  opposition  coalitions,  even  if  the  legacy  of  the  

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                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       uprisings  has  been  in  many  cases  to  strengthen  the  position  of  Islamists  around  the  region.    8  Crucial  in  this  respect  was  the  role  of  the  Muslim  Brotherhood,  which  formally  joined  the  uprising  at  the  end  of  January  and  thereafter  took  a  leading  role  in  protecting  the  protestors  against  the  police  and  baltagiyya  (Gunning  and  Baron  2013:  175).    9  At  other  times,  protestors  used  ICTs  as  decoys,  while  real  demonstrations  were  organized  through  word  of  mouth  (Gunning  and  Baron  2013:  284).  10  My  thanks  to  Sharon  Nepstad  for  pushing  me  on  some  of  the  arguments  in  this  paragraph.    11  The  existence  (and  relative  success)  of  ‘Islamic  State’,  alongside  other  branches  of  radical  Islamism,  illustrates  that  the  long-­‐term  association  between  revolutionary  ideologies,  hierarchy,  and  violence  remains  a  potent  force  in  the  contemporary  world.    12  This  brake  is  likely  to  be  short-­‐lived:  by  solving  one  problem  (mass  protests),  states  have  generated  a  new  one  (the  re-­‐ascription  of  forms  of  categorical  difference).  They  have  also  excluded  Islamist  parties  from  formal  politics,  with  the  exception  of  Ennahda  in  Tunisia  and  Morocco’s  Justice  and  Development  Party.  The  result  of  this  exclusion,  along  with  a  decline  in  public  support  for  Islamist  parties,  is  likely  to  lead  to  a  further  radicalization  of  Islamist  groups  (Mecham  2014).    13  Again,  my  thanks  to  Sharon  Nepstad  for  emphasizing  the  importance  of  these  points.    14  Crucial  here  was  the  extent  to  which  revolutionaries,  including  Islamists,  felt  that  their  goals  could  be  achieved  through  a  one-­‐off  historic  compromise,  as  was  the  case  in  Tunisia.  Where  radical  secularists  were  pitched  in  ‘exclusionary’  conflicts  with  virulent  Islamists,  as  was  the  case  in  Libya  and  Syria,  such  compromises  did  not  take  place  (Goldstone  2014b).  On  the  general  ‘modernization’  of  Islamist  parties,  see:  Gerges  (2013);  Hamid  (2014);  Ritter  (2015).    15  Around  75%  of  those  polled  for  the  2014  Arab  Barometer  favored  democracy  as  a  system  of  governance,  including  85%  of  Egyptians  (Tessler  2014:  31).  However,  it  is  also  clear  that  many  Arab  publics  are  somewhere  between  suspicious  and  fearful  of  Islamism,  hence  the  wide  support  for  the  ‘restoration  of  order’  by  various  authoritarian  forces  around  the  region  (Lynch  2014:  5,  7).  16  This  is  no  surprise.  Personalist  regimes  are  the  least  likely  form  of  authoritarian  governance  to  be  replaced  by  democracies  and  the  most  likely  to  require  violence  to  do  so  (Geddes  et  al  2014:  324-­‐6).